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H0N. TROMAS B. REED. 



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GENtENNIAli 9RATI0N, 

DELIVERED AT PORTL'AND, 

*<dfclLY 6, 1556:- 
H0N. THOMAS B. REED. 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. 




HOEVER stands, on a clear summer day, on the verandah 
at Cushing's Island and looks across the harbor, will find 
his eye resting upon a scene which for loveliness and 
varied beauty has no superior, and perhaps no parallel anywhere on 
the broad earth. The long slope of grassy verdure varied by the 
darker foliage of the trees spreads wide to the* water's edge. Then 
begins the bright sparkle of the summer sea, that many twinkling 
smile of ocean, that countless laughter of the waves which has 
lighted up the heart of man centuries since Eschylus died, and cen- 
turies before he lived. Across the sunlit waters, dotted with the white 
sails or seamed with the bubbling foam of the steamer's track, past 
the wharves, bristling with masts and noisy with commerce, the gaze 
falls uuon the houses sloping gently upward in the centre and be- 
coming more and more embowered in trees as they climb the hills at 
either end. Following the tall spires the eye loses itself in the bright 
blue sky above. On the right are the roadsteads and the islands 
stretching out of sight. On the left are Fore River, the forests, the 
Cape and the boundless ocean, and altogether a scene which mingles 
all that is best and bright of sea and shore. If you shut your eyes 
and let the lofty spires disappear, the happy homes glisten out of sight, 
and the wharves give place to a curving line of shelving, pebbly 
beach ; if you imagine the bright water unvexed by traffic, the tall 
peninsula covered with forests and bushy swamps, with the same 
varied expanse of island and of sea, and the whole scene undisturbed 
by any sound save the clanging cries of innumerable birds and water 
fowl, you will be looking upon Machigonne as it appeared to George 
Cleeve in the year 1632, when he landed, not knowing what a beauti- 
ful city he was to found, and never dreaming that at this distant day 
his name would be honored by so many people on the very scene of 
his varied struggles, his alternate victories and defeats. Where 



4 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

George Cleeve was born, where he lived before he came from Eng- 
land or where his bones now rest no one of his unnumbered descend- 
ants knows today. His labors have been over more than two hundred 
years. He was a strong, vigorous man, full of expedients, bold of 
speech, — "rash," they called it in those days when they used to fine 
men for expressing opinions — tenacious, and with an amplitude of re- 
source which strikes with wonder whoever considers his straightened 
circumstances and the results he brought about against powerful and 
persistent foes. In the whole of his long life of struggle and conten- 
tion his enemies were never victorious except in his extreme old age. 
He first came to this country in 1630, and built a house at Spur- 
wink, from which he was driven by Trelawney's agent, John Winter, 
who being also a masterful man, became his life-long enemy. In the 
year 1632, Cleeve, with his wife Joan, his daughter Elizabeth and his 
partner, Richard Tucker, landed at the cove which is now covered 
by the Grand Trunk grounds and which then received the little 
creek, on the bank of which he built the first house on the Neck. 
This first house was near where the foot of Hancock street corners 
on Fore street. There for four years he tilled the land he cleared, 
traded and, we may hope, got some small gain. Finding his title 
disputed by his old enemy he took the resolution to go to England, 
and found himself there in 1636. In England, by his "excellent 
address and commanding ability," he, an Independent in religion, at 
a time when Laud was in full possession of his greatest power, pro- 
cured from Sir Ferdinando Gorges and brought back with him, not 
only a deed for the whole Neck from Fore River to the Presumpscot, 
but also a plan for a united government of New England, which, had it 
been adopted and succeeded, might have made him a name as widely 
known as YYinthrop's, and might have made Massachusetts greater 
today by the whole of New Hampshire and of Maine. But 
Winthrop, though cognizant of the magnanimity and fairness of 
Cleeve toward himself, rejected the plan, feeling that firm faith in 
his own charter which. subsequent events justified. The fates were 
wiser than the designs of Cleeve, and in the result the Province of 
Maine belonging to Massachusetts, has become the State of Maine 
belonging to itself. Armed with his deed, we might have expected 
that George Cleeve would now trade and plant and traffic in peace. 
But peace is not the characteristic of a new settlement. Emigration 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. 5 

means vigor, and vigor likes to have its own way. Our ancestors in 
New England did not do as they do beyond the Mississippi, start a 
graveyard when they started a town. They went to law instead, a 
process which, while it may be as afflictive in its results as the West- 
ern method, has the abounding merit of encouraging a deserving 
profession, and of not being so sudden. Cleeve's law-suits about his 
title he won twice over. But winning them twice over was not 
enough. 

In those days the strong man kept his house until a stronger came 
and took it away. Evidence is plentiful that a powerful conspiracy 
well calculated to be successful in the end, had been formed against 
the owner of the Neck. But his enemies belonged to the Royalist 
party, and while their combination was forming against him the news 
came in 1642 that their friends over the water had met with disaster, 
and that Oliver Cromwell had appeared victorious on the scene. 
Cleeve, with that wise promptness to seize an advantage which was 
not the least of his characteristics, immediately crossed the Atlantic. 
He found his enemies on that side of the water, the backers of his 
enemies at home, dispersed and overthrown. He immediately set 
to work, and in a short time had induced Sir Alexander Rigby, a 
powerful member of Parliament, to purchase the Lygonia patent, 
which covered an area of forty miles square, stretching on the sea- 
coast from Cape Porpoise to Merrymeeting Bay, and back into the 
country to a line which crossed the head of Long Pond. Of this 
territory Rigby appointed Cleeve the deputy president. Knowing 
that his foes at home from whose machinations this happy turn in 
English affairs had enabled him to escape, were entrenched behind 
their de facto rights, and in that far-off country were not likely to 
yield their power without a struggle, he petitioned Parliament and 
obtained from it a commission to examine into charges of misgovern- 
ment which he filed against them. He then returned home and met 
the opposition his foresight had anticipated. Eor the next three 
'years, marked on his part by a course of conduct remarkably 
judicious, especially when his earnest and headstrong nature is con- 
sidered, his authority was successfully resisted; but in 1646 the 
Commissioners of Foreign Plantations decided in his favor, and 
George Cleeve took his rightful position as a recognized leader 
among men. From that time until the death of Alexander Rigby in 



6 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

1650 the Province of Lygonia, and especially the Neck, enjoyed 
peace and prosperity, while all around was discontent and misgovern- 
ment. These four years were the great days of George Cleeve. He 
was the first citizen of a prosperous community created by his own 
energy, vigor, and persistence. His enemies were subdued, his title 
seemed at rest and his authority was everywhere recognized. Shortly 
after Rigby's death, however, the tide began to turn. From that 
time until his death everything at home and abroad set against him. 
Not only his old enemies reappeared with the young and vigorous 
Jordan in place of John Winter who had died, but the great Province 
of Massachusetts Bay began to assert over Lygonia rights which had 
lain in abeyance for so many years. Against all this sea of troubles 
Cleeve, in his old age, but with his old courage, took up arms, bating 
not one jot of heart or hope. For seven years he kept up the 
unequal conflict at home and abroad, but was obliged in 1658 to 
yield to the claims of Massachusetts. From that time he was a 
loyal citizen of that province, though justice was denied him to the 
last. Before his death, which happened perhaps in 1666, his per- 
sonal fortunes appear to have come to a low ebb, though that idea 
seems hardly compatible with the offices to which he continued to be 
chosen. But though old and beaten and poor, his generous and un- 
conquerable spirit still survived ; for within two years of his death 
he was bound over to keep the peace with those who persecuted, 
after the fashion of those strict old times, an old servant of his 
better days. 

The history of the first thirty years of Portland shows how close 
the world is bound together. In all its fluctuations that history was 
closely responsive to the great events which marked those years in 
England. The bays and harbors and estuaries of the sea have each 
their own little waves, but the great lift of the tide comes only from 
the broad waters of the ocean itself. The battle of Nasby, which 
made Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of the great commonwealth of 
England, made George Cleeve the Governor of the little Province of 
Lygonia, and by one of those singular apparent inconsequences of 
which history is full, the approach of the days of Charles II. over- 
threw his short-lived supremacy and broadened the boundaries of 
Puritan Massachusetts. 

At the death of Cleeve there could not have been many persons on 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. 7 

the Neck, which was the popular name for what is now the city of 
Portland. Out of the forty families which, in 1675, lived in the town 
of Falmouth, which then extended from Spurwink to Clapboard 
Island, running back eight miles, only five or six lived on the Neck. 
The year 1675 was the year of the first Indian war. In the attacks 
on Falmouth which the savages made that year the whole town was 
rendered desolate. Thirty-two people at one attack were killed and 
carried into captivity. The minister, George Burroughs, who was 
afterwards executed at Salem for witchcraft, took refuge with ten 
men, six women and sixteen children on Cushing's Island, and was 
not rescued until ten days after. He was reserved for a sadder 
fate. 

Two years elapsed before the people returned to their ruined 
homes, but this disaster was only the precursor of a greater devas- 
tation. During the next ten years Falmouth grew apace. Seven 
hundred people found homes within its limits, and one hundred and 
twenty-five populated the Neck. But the signs of a new Indian war 
began to show themselves from many directions. Baron Castine, 
exasperated by the sacking of his house at Bagaduce, had in 1688 
captured the fort at Pemaquid and the next year a large expedition 
was fitted out against Falmouth and Fort Loyall, which had been 
built on the Neck after the war of 1675. The fortunate arrival of 
Major Church the very night before the attack, saved the town after 
a fight in which the enemy were routed and driven away. But the 
respite was of short duration. The next year the country, deserted 
by Massachusetts, was overwhelmed by an incursion of French and 
Indians, and for two years there was not a white man cast of the 
town of Wells. So utterly paralyzing was this last blow that the 
bodies even of the brave defenders of our town lay unburied under 
the summer suns and the winter snows until Major Church performed 
the last sad duty for the bones of those of whose blood he was 
certainly guiltless. Had he been able after the fight on Brackett's 
farm to rouse the people of Massachusetts to their duty, the terrible 
calamity might never have happened. For twenty-six years, more 
than a quarter of a century, almost the lifetime of a generation, 
what is now the city of Portland, was deserted. The ruins of Fort 
Loyall stood in the midst of a wilderness. The homes had disap- 
peared. The prosperous traffic had departed. But after the Peace 



8 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

of Utrecht, one after another of the old inhabitants or their 
descendants, with new blood from the adjoining country, came back 
and took up the line of progress and growth which has never since 
been broken. From that time until Mowatt burned the town in 1775. 
our people no longer suffered aggression but became themselves the 
aggressors. In 17 16 one Ingersoll built a hut on the Xeck and lived 
there. He was called, therefore, Governor Ingersoll. and probably 
was the only governor there ever was in Maine who was entirely 
satisfactory to the better element of his party. Next year there 
came two others, Major Moody and Captain Larrabee. In 171S, 
there were fourteen families, and in 1725 came Parson Smith, who 
found twentv-seven families, perhaps a hundred and fifty people. 
In 1749. there were seven hundred, and ten years afterward a 
thousand. In 1764, the census gave three thousand seven hundred 
and seventv for the whole town of Falmouth, which perhaps would 
imply eleven or twelve hundred for the Neck. When the town was 
organized, just a hundred years ago, there must have been about two 
thousand people. It is the life and times of those two thousand 
people, and our happy deliverance, by the power of advancing 
civilization, from most of their troubles and sorrows, their habits, 
customs and ways of living, that we celebrate today. I trust that 
whoever takes my place a hundred years from now. may have as 
great an advance to chronicle in the happiness and comfort of all the 
people. 

The miracle which a hundred years has wrought in the United 
States of America is beyond the pen of the historian and beyond the 
eloquence of the orator. Before such a wonder the pen moves in 
vain and the voice is uplifted to a task beyond its power. Maps 
made a hundred years ago show only a narrow line of settlement 
along the Atlantic coast and on the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans, 
while almost all beyond the Alleghanies is depicted like the un- 
known Central Africa before Livingstone entered on his voyages of 
discovery. Then no human skill or power could have guided any 
white man across that unknown waste which stretched from New 
York to the bay of San Francisco. No brave man then lived who 
was rash enough to dream of undertaking the journey. Today, in a 
moving palace of luxury, across bridges over mighty rivers, in tunnels 
through great hills, or climbing their mighty inclines, a mother sur- 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. 9 

rounded by her children may from Sunday to Sunday span the whole 
distance between the two great oceans. Then the journey from 
Boston to New York cost the physical price of four clays, with sixty- 
five frightful hours of discomfort, beginning at 3 o'clock in the morn- 
ing and ending at nightfall ; while today A*y> hours of comfort and 
repose quit# us of the distance. It took nine days by post for the 
news of the capture of Burgoyne to come to Portland, while the fall 
of Sedan w r as known the next morning, and the bombardment of 
Alexandria was in the evening papers. We can girdle the world 
today in a minute. A hundred years ago the Constitution of the 
United States had not been adopted. We were not even a nation. A 
hundred years ago Benjamin Franklin was yet alive at the ripe age of 
eighty years. George Washington had thirteen years of life to live, 
and the whole career of Napoleon had yet to unfold itself to the 
astonished world. But not for me are any of these inspiring themes. 
My humble talk deals only with a little corner of the great world ; but 
a little corner which is very dear to us here assembled, because it is 
beautiful and we love it, and it is our home. 

A hundred years ago habitable Portland was bounded by High 
street, I might almost say by Centre street and India, by the harbor and 
Congress street. Within that little parallelogram were almost all the 
houses left by Mowatt, with those rebuilt since the devastation made 
by his fleet eleven years before. Of the fifteen wharves which then 
pushed a little way into the harbor, not one has preserved its name 
or its identity. The first five at the east are included in the Grand 
Trunk grounds, and all the rest must be substantially covered by 
Commercial street and its improvements. Munjoy hill had still its 
original pine growth, while Bramhall hill was covered with scrub oak, 
which were called Vaughan's woods. The swamp extended down to 
Winter street, and ther^ was a big swamp in front of the Advertiser 
office, south of Federal street, drained by a brook which discharged 
itself at the foot of Exchange street. The houses of the poor were 
of but one-story, with a long, sloping roof. A great chimney in the 
centre gave two rooms on two sides, with fire-places, and a bed-room 
and entry on the other sides. The front room had a painted floor, 
with a few painted wooden chairs, a table for the Bible and psalm 
book. A few shells were on the mantel, the family register, and 
perhaps a few rude pictures on the wall. From this room, sacred to 



IO CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

" company " and to solemn occasions, the light of day was religiously 
excluded; board shutters took the place of curtains. The family 
did not live there. It was too good for them. They lived in the 
kitchen, amid the steam of cookery, the horrors of washing-day, and 
the smoke of refractory chimneys. The sides of this room were 
wainscotted in pine, four feet high, and the rest of the walls were of 
coarse plaster. The ceiling was also made low, for heat was not to 
be wasted. If the frame would have made it too high, the split 
boards on which the plaster was stuck were lowered by studs to 
lessen the space, which had to be warmed. The ceiling was soon 
begrimed with the smoke of the fire, and variegated by the steam of 
washing-day. The heads of the family had chairs, but blocks of 
wood were good enough for children. Candles, in iron candle-sticks, 
gave all the light which eked out the day. Japanned lamps for oil 
were for the front room and for visitors. On the dresser, a ladder of 
shelves hung against the wall, were displayed treasures of tin and 
pewter. In a chest was the crockery which adorned the state 
occasions. 

The garret was unplastered, each rafter and board, with the 
chimney itself, had an individuality, from which no cunning device 
detracted. The architectural lamp of truth shone over the whole 
structure. The family clothing hung from nails wherever convenient, 
and in the garret were the family beds. Sometimes a rough board 
partition divided the garret, but this was rare. If there -was a cellar 
there was no window to give light, and the sides had to be banked 
up in the winter with turf or pine boughs to make the cold blasts 
endurable. The houses of the rich had two stories, with four rooms 
on the first floor and four chambers on the second, with sometimes a 
porch, wherein to do the cooking. These houses had good cellars. 
The chimneys rested on arches, and the spaces under the arches 
were utilized for jam and preserves and such like delights. There 
were other houses, very few in number, perhaps not more than two 
or three, built within a year or two, which were still finer. The first 
brick house, the Longfellow house, had just been finished. Out of 
doors the contrast with the present day was still more marked. We 
were not within a quarter of a century of brick sidewalks. Perhaps 
there were a few flagstones in front of the dwellings of the rich, 
though Boston eight years later had none, and there may have been 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. ll 

some board walks but the people must have got about for the most 
part on trodden paths. Fancy the early spring time and the mud 
puddles ; and the affectionate mud which stuck to you closer than a 
brother! At night there were no lights out of doors. If you 
wanted such a comfort you carried it yourself. It was not until 1810 
that the town ventured upon the unexampled luxury of furnishing od 
for forty lamps which were subscribed for by the inhabitants, and 
then the fire wards in solemn assembly thought these lamps would 
need to be lighted only a hundred nights in a year. But a hundred 
years ago street lamps were not necessary. There were no 
amusements. There was not even a fire engine for the boys to run 
with. There was no theatre. Even twenty years after, the town 
solemnly reprobated the designs of certain evil minded persons who 
contemplated a play house, and the legislature was to be asked to 
prohibit its erection. There were no hacks. Not a ship was owned 
in town. There was no lighthouse on Portland Head, and there 
were only sixty-eight arrivals and eighty clearances that year. The 
first bank had yet to be incorporated thirteen years afterwards. 
Four or five letters came into town every week and as many went 
out. The roads were so bad that the mail was sometimes delayed 
over a month. It took five or six clays to get to Boston. " Now," 
says Willis, in 1833, with commendable pride, "now the mail is 
dispatched every day, performing the distance in sixteen or seventeen 
hours," little dreaming that we should reduce the time to three hours 
and a half. My successor, if the world has luck, will state it in 
minutes or perhaps in seconds. We had one newspaper, published 
once a week on a half sheet. People who did not go on foot went 
on horseback. Even if a man owned a chaise he was careful about 

taking it out. 

There was only one church, which stood where the First Parish 
now stands, but was broadside to the street. Sunday must have 
been a hard day to get through. There were no fires in the church. 
In the coldest winter it was unheated. Little foot stoves with glow- 
ing embers in them were all that mitigated the most arctic severity. 
The sermons were probably long, the prayers certainly were. The 
pews were square, the partitions being nearly as tall as a man. 
Everybody stood up at prayers. The seats were hinged so that they 
could be turned up for convenience of leaning. And certainly the 



12 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

lay Christian ought to have had that convenience. He needed it. 
It was a provision in favor of life. When you read this quaint entry 
in Parson Smith's Journal, March 15th, 1740: "Had uncommon 
assistance; was an hour in each of the first prayers," you cannot 
repress the feeling inquiry whether the poor parishioners also had 
" uncommon assistance." To us in these soft and degenerate days 
it does really seem as if poor unassisted human nature could not 
have stood it. 

The rich of that day were well dressed having wigs and three 
cornered cocked hats and much affluence of style. Everybody, rich 
and poor, wore breeches. Captain Joseph Titcomb — on whom be 
peace — first of men wore pantaloons in Portland in 1790. Home- 
spun must have been much worn and suspenders not at all. The 
rich must have been able to fare sumptuously every day for there 
was abundance of fish, flesh and fowl to be had for money. The 
poor could have had very little white bread. Rye and Indian, with 
corn bread, must have been a large part of their diet with hasty 
pudding and molasses. The drinking habits were more than bad. It 
was quite respectable to get drunk. The rich got drunk and even the 
clergy at ordinations sometimes "forgot decorum," which is probably 
the clerical name for the same thing. It was quite a point with the 
poor man of those days to get drunk on Saturday so that he might 
have Sunday to sober off in. Liquors were furnished at funerals, 
and there must have been scandalous scenes, for the selectmen in 
1788 "earnestly recommend" that the custom cease. The dead 
were carried to their graves by bearers. When Commodore Preble 
was buried in 1807, there was not a carriage in the procession. Of 
schools there was only one in the town, and thirty pounds was the 
expenditure for education that year. Cleanliness had not been 
reduced to a science and vermin of one syllable were not unknown. 
Cotton was not yet grown in the United States. There were no 
steam engines in America, and no lucifer matches anywhere on the 
earth. 

I have thus given you a rough and imperfect picture (no one 
knows better than I how imperfect it is), of Portland and its life a 
hundred years ago. Between that day and this you can each for 
yourself make the comparison. Is there one who listens to me today 
who is not glad that his lot has been cast in the Portland of today 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. I 3 

rather than on the Neck in 1786? And yet you will not go half 
through the next political campaign without hearing some praiser of 
the days gone by, on either side, bemoaning himself over the degen- 
eracy of our times. You will hear the phrases, "the poor poorer and 
the rich richer," rolling in rotund sentences out of those who have 
so long ceased to be babes and sucklings, that out of their mouths 
is perfected no praise of God. The rich have grown richer, but so 
have also the poor. Richer in rights and privileges; richer in com- 
forts and in happiness. I hold him to be a heathen and a publican 
who doubts that under the law of nature, the embodiment of which 
is God, the progress of the poor keeps more than equal pace with 
the progress of the rich. Far enough indeed are we from perfection. 
But whoever doubts progress, doubts God. "Whenever," says the 
president of the great Pennsylvania Railroad, "whenever we cease 
to spend money on capital account this road will begin to die." 
Whenever agitation for progress, agitation grounded on sound 
reasons, or false ones on wise reasons or silly ones, ceases, the race 
will have got ready to disappear from the earth. 

Look around you and see what a hundred years in this little 
peninsula has done for the comfort of us all. The streets and side- 
walks and parks belong to rich and poor alike. In 1786 what but an 
errand of mercy or necessity would have tempted a strong man to 
struggle with the mud and darkness of an April night in the journey 
from the head of High street to the foot of India? In 1886 any girl 
can go at night from Munjoy to Bramhall dry shod, lighted on her 
cheerful way by the blaze of electric lamps. When I thus think of 
the progress of the last century, and the sure progress of the next, I 
hope to be forgiven for the deep-seated envy with which I regard the 
happy Portlander of 1986. 

I have no design to give you a history of Portland today. That 
history has been written by Mr. Willis and Mr. Goold, and its earlier 
scenes have had full justice clone them by Mr. Baxter. And why 
should I try to do ill what they have done so well? My only design, 
by some glances here and there, is to show to our people how well 
worthy of study is the history of their own city. HereVwelead our 
prosaic, every-day lives, have happened events as tragic, scenes as 
thrilling as ever adorned the stories of those old world cities, for the 
sight of which we cross the rolling ocean. The quaint old letters 



14 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

reveal love as tender and true, courage as undaunted and steadfast 
and patriotism as lofty and ennobling as any which have been 
celebrated in story or in song. Great deeds thrill us wherever 
done, — great words wherever spoken, for human nature is broader 
than place and wider than kinship; but where great deeds have been 
done and noble words spoken at our very homes, on our very hearth- 
stones and by our own kith and kin, the thrill of pride becomes 
more positive because more personal. Who is there of you who 
hears me today who does not read with redoubled emotion, born of 
this sentiment of home and kinship, how this town waited with 
uneasy expectation and excited hope the issue of that gallant little 
sea fight in which the prowess of England and the courage of 
America were measured against each other by the brave sailors on 
the Enterprise and the Boxer? On this spot can human emotion 
ever cease to kindle when our thoughts rest on that little procession 
which conducted the dead captains to their romantic burial on the 
green hill side 

" Which overlooks the tranquil bay 
Where they in battle died." 

There is but one old world romance more touching than this ; that 
these two gallant young heroes who never met except as foes should 
lie side by side like brothers through the long night of time, over- 
looking the scenes of their last heroic endeavor. 

What heart here is not richer with honest sympathy ; who does 
not feel a deeper human interest in the great Commodore Preble 
when he has read the tender, manly letter in which he avows his love 
for the lady who afterwards bore his name. Love in all ages is the 
same, the same sweet mystery when fortune favors, the same awful 
sorrow, when fortune frowns. But Edward Preble, the gallant 
sailor, the scourge of the Barbary pirates, was our hero and we have 
a personal interest in the emotions of his heart as well as in his 
glory and his fame. 

Who here does not have an individual delight, a personal satis- 
faction when he stumbles on that sturdy phrase in the old moldy 
deposition where deponent saith that George Cleeve, on being told 
he could have his house and land at Spurwink if he would attorn to 
Trelawney, indignantly declared "he would be tennant to never a 
man in New England." Thus spoke the spirit of the new continent 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. I 5 

which echoes in our hearts today. The vigorous men who had put 
between them and the servitudes and tenancies of the old world, 
three thousand miles of watery waste, meant in the new world to be 
the peers of all others and the servants of none. 

There is a little passage in the old diary of the great General 
Knox, whom George Washington loved, which interests us more 
than it does all the rest of the world. When the brave General was 
sent to Ticonderoga to bring cannon for the siege of Boston, he 
records on the first day of the year 1776 that he wrote letters to 
General Washington "and one to my lovely Lucy." — That "lovely 
Lucy," dead now long years ago, was the daughter of Hannah 
Waldo, the spirited girl who, tired beyond endurance, and angered 
beyond repression at the indecision and procrastination of her lover, 
refused in the presence of all the wedding guests to marry the only 
son of Sir William Pepperell, the greatest magnate there ever was in 
all New England. The "lovely Lucy" had all her mother's temper, 
and more than her mother's pride, and the great general whose 
artillery had been prevalent in many a siege and on many a field 
was not always master of the stately mansion he built in the wilds of 
Maine. 

The town of Falmouth was twice destroyed. Twice was it sacked 
and left desolate. One scene in the first destruction, in 1676, always 
laid strong hold on my imagination. When the savages swooped in, 
killed the brave grandson of George Cleeve and carried the Bracketts 
into captivity, George Burroughs, the minister on the Neck, escaped 
to Cushing's Island, with ten men, six women and sixteen children. 
On the north slope, towards Peak's Island, can perhaps yet be seen 
the remains of the rough stone breast-work, behind which these poor 
people awaited death or rescue. What a blessing it was to George 
Burroughs that the prophetic vision so longed for in the earlier ages 
of the world was not vouchsafed to him. Over those long nights of 
vigil and those weary clays of waiting, with the unpitying ocean on 
the one side and the merciless savages on the other, there hung no 
black foreboding of the shameful death on the scaffold to be inflicted 
on him by his fellow Christians', more cruel in their ignorance than 
the heathen in their wrath. Death by tomahawk and scalping knife 
he was to escape, only to meet a sadder doom at the hands of his 
fellow Christians. George Burroughs was executed for witchcraft at 



I 6 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

Salem, in 1692. It was a shameful death; but not to him. He 
died as a brave man should, steadfast, prayerful and high of heart. 
Neither religion nor infidelity, neither faith nor science, nor the wit 
of man hath ever explained that mysterious way of God so often 
manifest in human history, when the brave, upright, truthful, manly 
man is driven ignominiously from the world, leaving it with all its 
honors and delights to the victorious miscreant, the sinuous schemer 
and the crawling coward. Yet in the great cycles of the Almighty 
the wicked flourish only for a season, while righteousness is like the 
stars, forever and ever. 

Falmouth was destroyed the second time in 1690; but the year 
before it narrowly escaped destruction. In the old orchard, opposite 
Deering's Woods, near which the boys of my day and neighborhood 
used to spend many a holiday, unconscious of the tragic events 
which marked its earlier history, was fought the greatest Indian fight 
in the district of Maine. On the 17th of September, 1689, there had 
landed at Peak's Island two hundred savages who awaited until the 
20th, a reinforcement, which doubled their number. During those 
three days the people could have expected nothing but destruction. 
They were few in number, utterly unable to cope with their enemies. 
It must have been a joyful sight to them, when at three o'clock on 
Monday afternoon, Major Benjamin Church came sailing into the 
harbor with the longed for but unexpected reinforcements. At 
night-fall, the Major, having carefully concealed his forces mean- 
while, drew close to the shore, landed his soldiers, made his 
dispositions, ordered himself called two hours before daylight and 
then, like a prudent man, went to bed. The Indians, during the 
night paddled across Back Cove and landed in the rear of the 
Brackett farm. Promptly the next morning at half an hour before 
daylight, Captain Church, not knowing where the enemy were, 
stationed a part of his forces a half a mile from the town, probably 
in Deering's pasture, had them send out scouts, and himself returned 
to town. Before he could get breakfast an alarm called him back 
and he learned from Brackett's sons the position of the enemy. 
Captain Hall appears at once to have marched against the foe, 
crossing the creek above Deering's Bridge and to have been hotly 
engaged, while the two other captains, remaining on the other side, 
fired at the Indians over the heads of Capt. Hall's company. 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. I 7 

Church, who had returned again to town to cause the musket balls, 
which were too big for his guns, to be hammered into slugs, found a 
few bullets and three knapsacks of ammunition and hurrying back 
had them transported across the creek. Then seizing the situation 
with the eye of a good soldier, he demanded how he could cross the 
creek farther up. When he was told there was a bridge, probably 
near where the railroad now crosses Portland street, he took the two 
companies remaining on this side the stream and ran shouting to the 
bridge. Crossing, and leaving there an ambuscade of six men, he 
ordered Captain Southworth with his company of English, to go 
down the edge of the marsh to the assistance of Captain Hall, while 
he, with the company of Indians, would go through the brush and 
attack the enemy in the rear. After much ''bad travelling" through 
the matted brush, he had just got into position, when the word came 
that the enemy were making for the bridge. He rushed back to 
intercept them and his ambuscade told him the enemy were skirting 
the swamp at the head of the creek, further up, on their way to the 
Neck. Not knowing the country, he scattered his men and started 
in pursuit. He seems to have gone around Bramhall's Hill to 
Thaddeus Clark's farm, where the peaceful, undisturbed cattle, 
grazing in the field showed him that no Indians had passed that way. 
Hastily retracing his steps to the field of battle, he found the victory 
had been won, that his march to the rear, though abandoned, had 
done its work, and the Indians had dissappeared, carrying with them 
their dead. Church's forces lost twenty-one killed and wounded. 
Among them were two soldiers from the fort and two townsmen. 

But the town, which had thus happily escaped, was not long to 
enjoy its security. The next year witnessed the successful attack 
which rendered Falmouth Neck an uninhabited wilderness for six 
and twenty years. Fort Loyall, of which all traces have now 
dissappeared, was built just before 1680, by the aid of Massachusetts. 
There has been left us no description of this fort, but it must have 
been large, for the town buildings were within the walls, which were 
made of logs. Besides Fort Loyall, there ware the Ingersoll garrison, 
at the foot of Exchange street and the Lawrence garrison on 
Munjoy. 

Fort Loyall was built near where Fore street crosses India, and 
stood on what was then a bluff fifteen feet or more above the water, 



1 8 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

an elevation which did more than anything else to ensue its downfall. 
During the year 1690 the Massachusetts authorities, despite the pro- 
tests of Major Church and the prayers of the people, had been 
gradually withdrawing the troops which garrisoned it. Only a few 
days before the fatal attack the captain in charge, Simon Willard, 
departed for boston with the soldiers of his company, leaving behind 
him less than seventy men. While Massachusetts was thus render- 
ing our little settlement helpless, the enterprising Frontenac, the 
Governor of Canada, was organizing destruction for the whole dis- 
trict of Maine. Early in January a small force started from Montreal, 
and gathering recruits as it moved, reached the banks of the 
Kennebec at Winslow, where they were joined by the Baron Castine 
and by Hurtel with his forces, red-handed from the massacre at 
Salmon Falls. All these French and Indians were gathered together 
early in May under command of the Count de Portneuf. From the 
Kennebec they marched to Merrymeeting Bay, and came to the 
Islands. The defenders of Fort Loyall seemed to have had no 
conception of the numbers to be arrayed against them. When the 
enemy first made their appearance, climbing over Munjoy Hill and 
planting themselves in ambuscade, Lieut. Thaddeus Clark, a gallant 
Irishman, with thirty of the stoutest youth, stepped out as bravely as 
gaily to drive away the lurking foes. But as they rushed up with 
loud hurrahs, the enemy poured in one volley and sprang upon them 
with sword and hatchet with such fierceness and in such numbers 
that onlv five, all wounded, escaped to Lawrence Garrison near by. 
That night, the 16th, Fort Loyall was summoned to surrender and 
the answer came "that they should defend themselves to the death." 
That night, also, the men from the garrison came into Fort Loyall 
where had been gathered the people of the town. It must have 
been a doleful company that sheltered itself behind those frail 
palisades. Thirty of their best and bravest lay killed and wounded 
and their wives and mothers and companions knew that they 
themselves were cut off from all succor and surrounded by howling 
savages. The light and smoke of their burning dwellings added new 
horrors to the scene. They soon found that under the bluff on 
which their fort was built, the enemy had gathered, out of reach of 
cannon ami musketry, and were slowly and surely undermining their 
defences. After four days of suspense and terror, after the greater 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. I 9 

part of the men had been killed or wounded, after destruction by fire 
became a terrible certainty, the brave little garrison surrendered and 
were for the most part handed over to the savages. Quarter was 
promised but the promise was not respected. How many sur- 
rendered no muster list disclosed. We only know that a few came 
back from Canada. While the fight was raging two men from 
Spurwink climbed the hill and saw the burning dwellings, while a 
little shallop from Piscataqua sailed into the harbor in time to see 
the sturdy defence of the garrisons. These spread the news far and 
wide. After Casco fell, the marauding savages with fire and flame, 
completed the destruction of all which the fleeing and captured 
inhabitants had left behind them. 

Of the last war episode in the history of Portland I shall not 
speak. Its bombardment by Mowatt everybody knows. A more 
wanton, indefensible assault upon an undefended city has not dis- 
graced the annals of modern warfare. 

But while the city has thus suffered by war and rapine it has also 
been the scene of much pomp and pageantry. Indeed the waters of 
Casco witnessed a great scenic display before a white man had set 
his foot on shore, for did not bold Captain Christopher Levett in the 
year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three sail 
down the harbor " with the king and queen and prince, bow and 
arrows, dog and kettle, in his boat, his noble attendants rowing by 
us in their canoes?" and was not meat, drink and tobacco given to 
the lordly savages ? and is not the same figured in Mr. Goold his book ? 
Let us hope, to complete the glowing scene, that great fishes chased 
each other with heads like "the stone horses in a gentleman's park," 
that Michael Milton's Triton looked on approving, having not yet 
"dyed the water with his purple blood," while the " tyrant" bear on 
the shore paused a moment from his pursuit of the succulent lobster 
in the shallow pool. 

On one great day in 1754 we had here the Governor of Massachu- 
setts, and a Governor of Massachusetts of that day was a superior 
being, and suspected it himself. There came also a majority of the 
Council, and the Speaker of the House and eight hundred troops. 
They stayed with us ten days, and there was great feasting and 
parade. They treated with the Indians and went their stately way 
back to Boston, and lived happily ever afterwards. 



20 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

I do not remember these two scenes, but I do remember the 
boyish face of the Prince of Wales, and that remarkable hat of the 
Duke of Newcastle, which I trust his "posterity have preserved, for it 
must have descended from his ancestors. I remember also the 
wonderful grandeur of the saluting ships as they belched fire until 
the white smoke covered the sea and floated away against the black 
and lowering sky. I little thought as I saw that mighty line-of-battle 
ship, the " Hero," sail majestic out of the harbor with her ninety 
guns tier on tier, that I should live to see that representative of 
England's pride and glory as obsolete and defenceless as the old 
block-house at York. Yet only ten years afterwards there came 
steaming into the harbor the tall iron ship, the " Monarch," before 
whose powerful cannon and armored prow the great ninety-gun ship, 
which would have been the pride of Nelson in the days of his highest 
glory, could have had no refuge even in flight. But the mighty 
"Monarch," with its towering sides and its turrets of iron, which 
bore the dead philanthropist across the sea, the monitors which 
welcomed her to our shores, and even the great admiral, whose 
benignant face added a two-fold charm to the glory of his mighty 
deeds, were but the ornaments of the great historic event their 
presence signalized. The honors thus paid to the remains of an 
untitled citizen solely because he had been the benefactor of his 
race, marked another epoch in our progress toward that happy day 
when the bronze statues of military leaders on horseback will no 
longer be the sole adornment of capital cities, when war, noble and 
ennobling as it sometimes is, shall cease from the earth; when the 
great brotherhood of men shall become a fact and not a dream ; 
when we shall have not only liberty and equality, but every talent 
and strength and power unselfishly consecrated to the good of all, 
we shall have true fraternity also, that bright vision alike of Com- 
munist and Christian. 

Yet while I thus celebrate the longed-for victory of peace, and my 
hope of the speedy coming of the golden age, I was no more insen- 
sible than you when we beheld together on that wonderful day of 
June, only a year ago, the old men who had gone forth to battle in 
the prime of their manhood, the middle-aged men who had conse- 
crated to their country the flower of their youth, go marching by the 
famous general, whose mind, as he stood uncovered to their cheers, 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. 2 1 

must have been thronged with strange memories of the brave days 
gone by. Ah ! we cannot help it. Whatever reason may teach, or 
wisdom dictate, that heart is dead that does not vibrate with all its 
chords to the flow of martial music and the measured march of men 
who met death face to face on the stricken field. 

I know that one here in my place today ought to speak in no 
stinted terms of the enterprising, solid and strong men and women 
who lived here one hundred years ago, whose sturdy descendants are 
scattered all over this hall. But to do it worthily would require not 
the knowledge born of hurried moments snatched from more engross- 
ing duties, but that ripe acquaintance with all our history which 
William Willis carried with him to the grave, and which William 
Goold possesses today. Even then the day would be far spent 
before I could close. 

Nor can I speak fittingly of the poets and artists, statesmen and 
scholars, who have adorned our history, and have helped to make 
the old town famous to the outer world. What justice would a page 
of description do to the character, the poetry, the genius of Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow ? How could I, in a passing mention, dis- 
tinguish between what was brilliant and what was frivolous in 
Nathaniel Parker Willis. Would you have me undertake to portray 
in a sentence the strange genius of John Neal ? I might as well try 
to bring back to this generation the pleasure and laughter which 
Jack Downing's Letters caused to the generation which flourished 
before I was born. Nor have I any idea that I could mete out the 
proper phrases for the ripe scholarship of Henry B. Smith, the 
theology of Dr. Nichols, the pastoral worth of Edward Payson, or 
the great administrative powers of Bishop Bacon. It would be 
invidious to select from the living, or I could not refrain from offer- 
ing my tribute of admiration and regard to that aged minister who 
came to us from over the sea, whose noble face, whose stately beauty 
of language, whose full, strong, upright life has always made him 
seem to me the ideal Christian minister, preaching the faith and 
practice of which his own life is the shining example. I should feel 
much freer to speak, for they were almost of my day, of the fame 
which was lost to us by the untimely death of William Law Symonds, 
and of the fame which Walter Wells might have won had not that 
strong intellect been overborne by so frail a body. 



2 2 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

Nor will I speak of the statesmen except as I saw them. Time 
would fail me to do justice to them also. George Evans came to 
Portland in his old age. I well remember hearing him present a 
case in court; and the impression which his quiet power, clearness 
and strength made on me then, has enabled me since to understand 
how he might have been the peer of the best in the days of Webster, 
and Clay, and Calhoun, and to comprehend what manner of man he 
was in his prime, when he attacked John Quincy Adams with such 
vigor and power that the old man eloquent, who never declined battle 
with any other man, saw fit to make him no reply. 

The most impressive scene I ever witnessed took place in this 
very hall. Here, almost on the very spot where I now stand, William 
Pitt Fessenden stood, before the constituency which had loved and 
honored him for so many years. The hall was black with the throng- 
ing multitude. It was at the beginning of a great presidential cam- 
paign, the last he was ever to witness. The great problem of recon- 
struction was to be reviewed. Mr. Fessenden had been the master 
spirit in its solution. The war debt was 10 be assailed. Mr. 
Fessenden had been chairman of the committee of finance and 
secretary of the treasury. To all this was added the intense per- 
sonal interest of his recent defeat of the impeachment of Andrew 
Johnson. With full knowledge of the storm about him, but with 
the courage of perfect conviction he faced the responsibility. The 
occasion was a great one, but the man was greater than the occa- 
sion. Calmly ignoring, except in one sharp, incisive sentence, all 
that was personal, with his old vigor, terseness and simplicity, he 
explained to his townsmen the momentous issues of the campaign. 
From the moment he began, the party rage commenced to cease 
and the old pride in his greatness and honesty began to take its 
place. How strong he looked that night! Although all the world 
might falter, you knew that calm face would be steadfast. To him 
had happened the rare good fortune of having the courage and 
character which matched a great opportunity. Few men would have 
been so brave, and fewer still successful. 

I have not spoken of the conduct of our city in either of the wars 
waged beyond its limits. That subject also would be too vast for an 
occasion like this. Nor do I like to speak at all of the one within 
the memory of us all. For us it has as much of sorrow as of glory. 



CENTENNIAL ORATION. 23 

It brings up to me always the vision of a fair young face, the quiet 
associate of the studious hours, the bright companion of the days of 
pleasure. Can it be that I shall never look into those cheerful eyes 
again? Can it be that neither the quaint jest of the happier hours 
nor the solemn confidences of the heart just opening to full sense of 
the high duties of life will ever again fall upon the ear of friendship 
or of love? It can be no otherwise. He can only live in my 
memory, but he lives there, sublimated in the crucible of death, from 
all imperfections, clothed upon with all his virtues, and radiant with 
all the possibilities of a generous youth. Other companions have 
failed in their careers, but not he. All the world has grown old, but 
he is forever young. And yet the dead, however sweetly embalmed, 
are but the dead. One touch of the vanished hand were worth all 
our dreams. All our memories, however tender, are consolation 
only because there can be no other, for the lost strength and vigor 
of the living, the stilled pulsations of a heart no longer beating to 
thoughts of earth. What safe my heart holds, holds many a heart in 
this great audience. The generations to come will celebrate the 
glory. This generation knows the cost. 

With many words unspoken, with many thoughts unsaid, I must 
hasten to the close. There have been those in times past who have 
dreamed of a greater Portland than that on which our eyes now rest. 
They have believed that at some not distant day the old town of 
Falmouth, from Spurwink to Clapboard Island, would swarm with 
uncounted thousands ; that on the land on either hand between us 
and the ocean the great warehouses would yet stand, bursting with 
riches brought over the sea and across the continent; that the great 
roadsteads where the tall sloops used to ride before a white man 
lived on the shore, would be studded with ships and thronged with 
the commerce of the world. If this wild vision shall ever become a 
reality, and the things of earth then concern us who sit here, there 
will not be wanting those who will think with sad, regretful remem- 
brance of the golden sunsets which now gild the White $ills and 
pour their softened radiance over the darkening forests, over the 
fields rich with bright vendure, and over the tranquil waters of the 
broad river, which ebbs and flows near the base of Bramhall's Hill. 
They will long also to stand again on the Munjoy of today and look 
out on the smooth, untroubled expanse of sea, on the great «reen 



24 CENTENNIAL ORATION. 

islands and all the varied landscape which lies between the eye and 
the horizon's edge. For whether your eye looks seaward or shore- 
ward, there is no more beautiful city than the beautiful Portland 
of today. No wonder the thoughts of the great poet were so often 
on the lovely spot of his nativity. No wonder the brave and famous 
admiral, storm-tossed on many a sea, longed to take his eternal rest 
amid these bright scenes of his childhood. Yet this longing was not 
born of the memory of beauty alone. Whatever fame great achieve- 
ments may bestow ; whatever honors the world may give, it is ever 
the most cherished hope of every seeker after fame or fortune to be 
kindly remembered and lovingly honored on the spot which gave him 
birth. 



Wm, 



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